An Ode to Poutine

Ahhhh Poutine....

How I love your salty, savory goodness

How genius were those wonderful Canadians to invent such a tasty treat

I mean, how have we Americans, a society known for gluttony,

yet to figure out the deliciousness that is french fries, cheese curds and gravy.

Poutine, I long for you when I'm back in the states.

I long to plan another vacation to Canada as soon as I get home.

Could there possibly be anything more delicious or perfect than poutine?

(Well , maybe Lay's Poutine Chips - again how do we not have those here?!)

Ahhh Poutine, you are perfect in my eyes, on my tastebuds and in my tummy.

I will think of you fondly until I get to enjoy you again.

How Could I Forget?!?!

One of the best meals we had on our vacation was in Miami before we even boarded the ship.

We went to a Cuban restaurant while in Miami because we figured we should eat some good Cuban food while there - if even just for a night.

We started our meal with these most tender and delicate pieces of fried pork. The pork was served with a lime, garlic butter which was out of this world delicious.

For dinner the hubs enjoyed a delicious steak with beans and rice and fried plantains.

However I'm going to say mine took the award for the best meal of the night. I need to find a replicated recipe STAT. I tried Mofongo. It was tender and savory mashed plantains served in this awesome tall voodoo wood cup circa. Brady Bunch Hawaii Adventure era. On top of the Mofongo were the most flavorful huge shrimp cooked in the lime garlic butter with these wonderful capers.

DELICIOUS! I need to find a recipe for Mofongo STAT!

We're Back!!!

Well sorry for the delay on the blog - the hubs and I were away on vacation.

A Caribbean Cruise to be exact.

We only really got to eat out on one of the islands one time, but we had some excellent foods while we were there.

One of our first ports of call was Samana in the Dominican Republic.

We stopped at this beach resort hotel (since our excursion was cancelled) and had the most incredible appetizers for lunch that day.

The hubs had this fantastic fried chicken - the spices were incredible, mild yet flavorful and not greasy at all.

I had these potato croquettes that had a seafood stew on top of them. It had a little kick to it but wasn't so spicy you couldn't eat it. It had the most wonderful balance of delicate seafood and crispy croquette and a sweet tomato sauce.

I didn't really take pictures of anything else we ate. But we ate well that's for sure!

We were on Norwegian Cruise Lines, so you could eat whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted. We ate in the formal dining room a few nights and had some wonderful meals. Our first tight I had the most robust and delicious tagliatelle with braised short ribs. Oh my god I need to re-create this recipe.

We had some delicious vanilla bean souffle, indulged at the chocolate buffet (but nothing was really all that exciting or memorable). We enjoyed a great Hibachi dinner in the Lotus Garden Restaurant - and we also splurged twice on Sushi. I had these wonderful rolls I've never seen before. One had the whole roll that was tempura fried and another was unagi (my favorite) with cucumber and avocado in a roll. DELISH!

The one nice thing is we really didn't eat ourselves silly on the cruise. Although the hubs did rename breakfast to Bacon Meal since he enjoyed that every morning. And I too truly enjoyed a pecan sticky roll every morning too. Ahh sweet indulgence!

But now we're back and back to cooking again - so I'll have some more posts for you!

Another Tasty Canadian Chip

So we tried another bag of tasty Canadian treats Friday Night.

We stopped in the Humpty Dumpty Factory on PEI to see if they did tours and they didn't but they gave us some free bags of chips for our effort. The BBQ ones Hubs ate on his own and loved them. These we had to try together.

They are MUCH better than a Cheeto. They are made with corn instead of flour and because of that they taste like a cross between a Frito and Dorito. But the cheese is real cheddar cheese instead of fake crap. They are by far the best chip I've eaten aside from those darned Gravy Chips!

Canada Katie, you must bring us some of these when you come to visit next - along with some Curly Wurlies, some Smarties, Gravy Chips, Smoky Bacon Chips...

I wonder why I'm fat??

Adventures in Canadian Eating, Take 3

From PEI, the hubs and I took the ferry and thendrove to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. First off, if you ever have the chance to go to Cape Breton, you must go. It is by far the most beautiful place we have ever visited - and we've both been all over the country and many places in Europe.

Prior to gettin g on the ferry we stopped at a little local vineyard and bought a bottle of the most delicious Wild Blueberry Wine. It was more savory than sweet with very subtle tones and is so going to go well with a nice pice of pork or beef.

Our Ferry ride over introduced us to two delicious Canadian classics. Cows Ice Cream (so natural and delicious!) and more importantly Lays Gravy Flavored Potato Chips. Dear God! How does Lays not sell these in the states. It's supposed to be a take on fries with Putine but in Chip form. It's like a not so spicy or tangy BBQ potato chip. Adam and I spent the rest of the trip going to every market to find bags of these to take home. Finally we found mini bags at some service stations and we took 7 of those back to the states with us.

Hubs Loves him some gravy chips!

Along the potato chip journey we also encountered Smoked Bacon Potato Chips, Roast Chicken Potato Chips, Dill Chips and Dill Pickle Chips and a variety of other flavors we never got the chance to try. We ended up bringing back more potato chips than anything I think.

On our first night in Cape Breton we went to this great restaurant called the Lynwood Inn which was very nice and they had this great locacl musician playing who was like listening to James Taylor.

I had this great salmon that had this wonderful cream sauce that had chopped hard boiled egg in it. With some help from the girls on the Nest What's Cooking board, I think I finally found the closest thing to it - so now I can't wait to make that.

Our 2nd night in Cape Breton, we went to a Ceilidh (pronounced Kay-lee). It was fabulous to hear the great local music live and it was by far one of the most fun things we did on the trip. However, by the time it ended at almost 10 pm most of the restaurants were closed. There was however a little local pizza place open and we decided to get a pizza to take back to the B&B room.

They were out of most of the individual slices, so we were game for a whole pizza. They had this pizza on the menu called Donairs pizza. And we actually saw the guy working there grinding the Donair in the meat grinder. We had no clue what it was but decided not to ask and just order it.

Oh my god so glad we did - it was the best pizza we've ever had - hands down. It was this incredible crust with a creamy garlic sauce, ground donair, onion tomato and cheese. We got our pizza, a quart of milk from the mini mart and ate while watching the olympics in our room with the fire place going.

The pizza, was so divine, that we finally asked in Halifax what Donairs was at a restaurant and we discovered it's a ground spiced beef - like what is used for Gyros meat. So from then on we were on a mission to find Donairs to take back to the states with us. Finally at a little market outside of St. John New Brunswick, we did find some.

So if you get up to Canada, do try some Donair Pizza!!

Cheers!

Adventures in Canadian Eating, Take 2

From New Brunswick we went to PEI. On our first night in PEI we were told we had to try a Lobster Supper. We ended up in New Glasgow for their lobster supper.

I wish we would have had lobster supper for every meal on our trip up there. This was by far the best meal we had in our whole trip in Canada and I was upset on our last night in Canada that we didn't eat something as fun or delicious or exciting.

If you go up to PEI you have to try the New Glasgow Lobster Supper.

You get to pick your meal - just apps and dessert, lobster, fish, etc. It comes with bread, chowder or soup, all you can eat mussels and chowder, your lobster and all you can eat desserts.

Now, I enjoy mussels but it's hard to get good, fresh tasting mussels out here. But I figured, Man we're IN PEI I can't not have them. I didn't think hubs would eat them at all, but alas, he did and we had to go through two big buckets or more to get our love worth. They were the best mussels we've ever had and I would move to PEI just for the mussels.

It was more food than I could ever imagine - but the seafood chowder was incredible. The mussels, so good, and the lobster - like buttah baby. Sweeter than lobster that we get in RI to say the least - hence we haven't had lobster since we got home.

Here's the hubs with with this mussels.

MMMMM Seafood!!

The second night in PEI we tried a different lobster supper - the Fisherman's Wharf - and it was still good but we went with the PEI Snow Crab that night - a nice treat since we don't get snow crab down here at all. The crab was good, but I should have had lobster. Again more mussels than you could shake a stick at - but you had to fight off the crazy bus loads of tourists taking buckets of mussels. So a different experience. The New Glasgow one is a more sit down and relax night.

Oh and here's the hubs with the lobster who eats tourists - we found him upon our arrival in PEI. His name is Lorenzo Lobster - if you make it to PEI say hello! But don't get eaten!

Adventures in Canadian Eating, Take 1

So Hubby and I went up to Canada the other week for a nice long vacation. We started in New Brunswick - so that's where this post will start.

In NB, visiting our good friends, we went to the city market on Saturday. There were so many delicious sights and smells and flavors it was so sad we did that first and not on our way back to the states - we would have come home with much more!

Here's the market!





While there, we bought some fresh garlic. We have a friend whose family goes up to Canada to work on a garlic farm each summer - they get free room and board in exchange for their labor and they get a ton of garlic to take home and they always bring us a few bulbs. Each year we use one and then we plant the others in our garden to harvest in the late summer. So while confronted with this great local garlic that smelled divine... we had to buy some of our own. We spent the rest of the trip drying it out in the back window of the car, and it made us crave Italian food the whole trip!


While at the market, I saw a sign for dulse.

I grabbed the hubs and we spoke with the vendor who let us sample some. It's a sea vegetable, like seaweed or kelp that is dried on the rocks. It's got a VERY strong fishy/oceany/sea flavor. Being from the coast out here, I didn't think it would bother me but I couldn't stand it, it was so chewy, tough and strong. Hubs however, loved the dulse so he had to buy a bag to bring home with him.

I let Adam enjoy his dulse while I picked out a great local strawberry and basil vinegar that is just out of this world delicious!

Aside from the excitement, the neatest thing was waiting in line to buy our vinegar, we were behind a French Family (Ok maybe they were from Quebec) but they spoke all in French and they ordered du jambon... oooo du jambon - hubs and I were in heaven with the French - Jambon is one of our favorite French words. For those non Francais speakers - Jambon is Ham.